In college, I was surprised by the excitement of those in the student union who were hovering over the headlines in the local newspaper: "Russia Launches the First Satellite...'Sputnik.'" Russia had won the "race to space." How could Russia, where the majority of the population had only learned to read and write in…

The field of library and information science (LIS) continues to struggle with the issue of diversity and inclusion. As we are perpetually working to increase racial and gender diversity in the profession, the definition of diversity continues to broaden to include socioeconomic status, education, language, literacy, age, sexual orientation,…

This article reports on a research study designed to identify who participates in library-based summer reading clubs (SRCs) and why they elect to do so. To address this aim, questionnaires were completed by caregivers of 246 children upon enrollment to the SRC of a metropolitan library as well as 480 youth; the questionnaire was designed to learn…

Research suggests that exposure to books and other resources about people who look like them, and stories that reflect their world, may contribute to an infant and toddler of color's developing appreciation of self. The purpose of this study was to examine children's board books published between 2003 and 2008 to determine the representation of…

The proportion of ethnic minorities in the LIS school student population has remained significantly lower than in the U.S. population: in 2002, ethnic minorities constituted only 11.3 percent of the LIS student population, compared to 31.3 percent of the U.S. population. Despite efforts by LIS schools and associations in recruiting and retaining…

Diversity has been identified as a priority in library and information services for some time. The limited published research on diversity programs in libraries, though, has focused on academic libraries. This article represents the results of a study of leadership diversity in large, urban public libraries. In the study of members of the Urban…

The use of 200 public libraries in New York City was analyzed according to their neighborhood characteristics. In addition to demographic, economic, and cultural factors traditionally considered, the social and spatial interactions within a neighborhood were related to public library use. Correlation and regression analyses were implemented for…